‘Sisters of the Moon’: The weirdest song Stevie Nicks ever recorded
Most people struggled – and still do – to get on board with Tusk because it was so out of sorts for a Fleetwood Mac record. And one of its gems ended up being one of Stevie Nicks’ strangest ever. To the point where even she didn’t know what it was trying to do.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell this song is about,” she told Rolling Stone. “It wasn’t a love song, it wasn’t written about a man. It was just about a feeling I might have had over a couple of days, going inward in my gnarly trollness. Makes no sense. Perfect for this record.”
Tusk isn’t bad, not by a long shot. In fact, many are lost, forgotten favourites guaranteed to hook into anybody who’d give them a chance. Like ‘Sara’ and ‘What Makes You Think You’re the One’, both prove Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were still impacted by each other past the peak of Rumours, indirectly or otherwise.
But those expecting a Rumours part two were in for a shock, as Tusk wasn’t ever going to be just that. Or, it wasn’t going to be that at all, as Buckingham later said, with Tusk intending to “undermine following the formula” and go against everything their label wanted to do. But in doing that, they came up with some off-kilter tracks, ones most people find difficult to make sense of.
Like ‘Sisters of the Moon’. This isn’t immediately an obvious choice for stranger Nicks’ songs, but that’s why it’s so entrancing. Because at first, it feels like a blazing rock masterpiece with an intro that builds and builds, but even still, you’re never really entirely sure where it’s supposed to be going. Even better, Nicks wasn’t sure either, even though it started as her reflecting on her declining health during their peak years.
But that eventually blossomed into something darker, even for Nicks. Never one to shy away from the more whimsical lyricisms, Nicks dug deeper for this particular track. And she did so by effectively making up a different version of herself to navigate it all, which is fairly unusual, especially when it came from a very real place and turned into something convoluted.
As she said, the song was her “putting up an alter-ego or something, the dark lady in the corner, and there’s this Gemini twin-thing.” She went on, saying it wasn’t “a love song” or anything “written about a man”, despite the way it sounds like one of Nicks’ familiar loverlorn arrangements. Instead, it was about “a feeling I might have had over a couple days, going inward in my gnarly trollness.”
These grotesque images are subtle as Nicks’ captures a specific persona, walking into a room, “her black robes trailing” with a widow spider in the room, her “black moons in those eyes of hers” suddenly making sense and catching up to the melancholy she feels in her heart. But even still, this isn’t the weirdest thing about it. It’s the fact that it feels like a solitary addition to their work, as well as an anthem for a lone broken heart leading the charge of sisterhood.
It’s completely Nicks, you can tell from the familiar features in the arrangements and, of course, the melody and the lyrics. But there’s something airy about it, too. It’s genuinely haunting, taking you somewhere you’re not entirely ready to face yet. And best of all, it’s bolstered by Buckingham’s blazing guitar solo that somehow feels more like a cry for help than his usual explosive excellence.
